Greek and Roman religion

The gods of Greece are older than Greek writing. Clay tablets from Mycenaean palaces, written in the script called Linear B around 1300 BCE, already name Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and Dionysus. After the collapse of the palaces, Greek city-states took shape from the 8th century BCE, each honouring its own patron gods.

Great sanctuaries served all Greeks. At Olympia the games for Zeus were held from 776 BCE, by tradition; at Delphi the oracle of Apollo advised cities and kings. Athens built the Parthenon for its goddess Athena from 447 BCE.

Rome had its own gods, among them Jupiter, Mars and Janus, and rites shaped by its Etruscan neighbours. As Rome grew it absorbed Greek myths and identified its gods with Greek ones, and later welcomed gods from Egypt and the East. With the empire came the worship of the emperors. From the 4th century CE Christian emperors restricted the old religion, and in 391–392 Theodosius I banned pagan sacrifice.

After the Mycenaean palaces fell around 1200 BCE, Greek religion lived on in local cults through centuries that left few written traces. The revival of the 8th century BCE brought the alphabet, the poems of Homer and Hesiod, and the first great sanctuaries. Cities marked out sacred precincts, built temples first in wood and then in stone, and sent colonists across the Mediterranean carrying their gods with them. Panhellenic centres such as Olympia, Delphi and the island of Delos drew worshippers from every Greek city.

In the classical age of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, religion was woven into the life of the city-state. Athens honoured Athena at the Panathenaia, a festival whose procession is carved on the Parthenon frieze, and staged its tragedies and comedies at the festivals of Dionysus. The Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis offered initiates a better lot after death. New gods could be welcomed: the healing god Asclepius was brought to Athens in 420 BCE. Religion could also be a matter of law, and in 399 BCE Socrates was condemned to death on charges that included not recognising the city’s gods.

The conquests of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BCE, opened a new world. In the Hellenistic kingdoms that followed, rulers received divine honours during their lifetimes, Greek gods were identified with Egyptian and Near Eastern ones, and the Egyptian deities Isis and Serapis gained followers far from the Nile. Philosophical schools such as the Stoics and Epicureans offered their own accounts of the gods, often more abstract than those of the poets.

Rome’s religion grew alongside these changes. By tradition the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitol was dedicated in 509 BCE, the first year of the Republic, and priestly colleges of pontiffs and augurs guarded the rites on which the state’s success was believed to depend. Rome absorbed foreign gods when the need arose: in 204 BCE, during the war with Hannibal, the Sibylline Books advised bringing the Great Mother, Cybele, from Asia Minor. Yet the Senate could also act against cults it distrusted, as when it harshly suppressed the Bacchic rites in 186 BCE.

Augustus, who became Rome’s first emperor after the civil wars, presented himself as a restorer of piety. He repaired dozens of temples, revived old priesthoods and in 12 BCE became pontifex maximus, the chief priest, a title held by every emperor after him. His adoptive father Julius Caesar had been declared a god in 42 BCE, and the imperial cult spread across the provinces. Under the empire, mystery religions such as those of Isis and Mithras flourished alongside civic cults, and a new faith, Christianity, grew from small communities into a church spread across the Mediterranean.

Christians’ refusal to sacrifice brought conflict. Emperor Decius required a general sacrifice in 250, and Diocletian launched the Great Persecution in 303. The reign of Constantine reversed the situation: after his victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312 he favoured Christianity, and in 313 toleration was proclaimed. Julian, the last pagan emperor (361–363), tried to revive the old cults but died on campaign in Persia. Gratian removed the Altar of Victory from the Senate house in 382, and the laws of Theodosius I in 391–392 banned sacrifice and closed temples.

The end was gradual rather than sudden. The great Serapeum of Alexandria was destroyed around 391, the Eleusinian sanctuary was abandoned at the end of the 4th century, and the ancient Olympic games ceased in the late 4th or early 5th century; scholars disagree on the exact date. In 529 Justinian barred pagans from teaching, an act traditionally seen as closing the philosophical schools of Athens. Temples such as the Parthenon and the Pantheon survived by becoming churches, while country people kept older customs for generations, the root of the word “pagan”, from Latin paganus, a villager or civilian.

Greek and Roman religion was a matter of doing more than believing. There was no creed and no single holy book. Piety (eusebeia in Greek, pietaspietas Dutiful respect towards the gods, the state and one’s family, a central Roman virtue. Glossary in Latin) meant giving the gods their due through sacrifice, prayer and festivals, and honouring parents, guests and oaths.

The gods were powerful, immortal and often unpredictable, with human passions told in a rich mythology. Above them stood fate. People sought the gods’ favour for their city, family, crops and journeys, in a relationship of exchange: “I give so that you may give.”

Ideas about the afterlife varied: the shadowy underworld of Hades in Homer, rewards for initiates in the mystery cults, and the philosophers’ teachings on the immortal soul.

The temple was the house of a god’s statue; sacrifice took place at the altar outside, where animals were offered and their meat shared in a communal feast. Priests and priestesses were usually citizens holding office, not a separate clergy.

People consulted oracles, read omens and made vows. Festivals with processions, theatre and athletic contests filled the year. In the home, the hearth and household gods received daily offerings.

There was no sacred book. What the Greeks knew of their gods came largely from poets: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod’s Theogony, which tells of the birth of the gods. Hymns, inscriptions and ritual calendars recorded how worship was done.

In Rome, priestly colleges kept books of rites, and the Sibylline Books, oracles consulted in times of danger, were guarded on the Capitol.